Let’s keep believing!
Marketing is supposed to help sales…
I personally think FM on the cloud is a bad idea unless you have a VM you control so remote local access to the OS and not just some “instance” you actually have no control over. There is no reason I can see for FM to have a cloud product or be a “cloud first” company since they can’t be competitive in this market and don’t have the technology optimized for it. It’s a client server db from the 80’s/90’s which works great on a LAN but not so much on a WAN especially a public one like the internet. This is purely a marketing based strategy not based in reality and it distracts them from what they really should be doing which is improving FM in significant ways which they seem unable to do. I suspect they will try to try to give “on-prem” FM a slow death just like the runtime unless they see their “cloud first” strategy failing then they may reconsider.
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That's my fear. When cloud began, cloud being a new word for an existing service where someone else would host your server, it has been very popular. Today it seems that's not the case anymore. Claris wish to provide a turn-key solution where you have nothing to take care of. Fantastic isn't it ! The only reason is to make more money. And that's the goal of any company. This is something I don't buy, I want to control my hardware. I may say yes to cloud hosting where I rent a server somewhere, but having the complete control over it. This way the provider is responsible for my server to be up and running so I don't run in issues if the hardware fails. That'S what you get when paying someone to host your Web site.
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The cloud is full of false promises. FM’s real advantage is on prem it’s faster, more secure and easier to manage. The can’t compete in the cloud because they don’t have a cloud product. Cloud is a marketing strategy it’s not a product one. The ONLY companies making money from cloud are AWS and MS (Azure) everything runs on their platforms so companies just have to cover that cost and put their margin on top of it. Claris can’t be competitive in the cloud because a) the product is way too slow over a WAN vs other cloud optimized solutions and worse itself on prem b) they have to build their own cloud infrastructure from scratch which is expensive and that cost is passed on to the customer.
Instead of focusing all their time and energy on things they are not good at they should be spending it on things they are good at which is delivering a very flexible and relatively easy to learn data management platform. What they don’t understand is that they have a deployment problem not a cloud done. IF you could install FM ONLY ONCE on a computer and then all new versions/features etc… were delivered over the wire thier problem would be solved.
I have 6 versions of FM in my computer so I can support all the customers who are still using old versions which is ridiculous. I should have just one version that gets constantly updated they do that and no one will care able cloud any longer.
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Before I start, I’d just like to offer a few comments received over the years using our cloud system:
“our systems have been working virtually flawlessly and the move to your platform from what we had before is like moving from a Nokia 6110 to the iPhone 6S.” - the reference shows how long ago this was sent from an MD of a Swiss company and more recently - "Thank you very much Andy and team for all the hard word. It is much appreciated and our team is very happy and confident when they have your support "
This week we received this alongside confirmation of payment from a customer in Northern Italy: “Your cloud hosting service works perfectly”.
There are always promises, but it is also possible to deliver on those promises with personal support and putting the customer first.
Now we are not a cloud service as most think of it, but no FileMaker software runs on any computer device, we use relatively old tech RemoteApp streaming and FileMaker hosting. Hence it is truly completely managed and all processing and everything does run in ‘the cloud’.
The key thing is that we take full responsibility for every action, we invest a huge amount of time in security and maintenance, but most of all we’re always on the end of the phone or email to advise or support our customers.
This is where the cloud usually falls down. Yes, you can spin up instances, take the subscription money, but doing it as an impersonal invisible monolith when it comes to obtaining help, which is why we don’t use AWS, will ensure customers don’t stay.
I’ve just had an email in from a client who has upgraded to Catalina on his MacBook and of course things are no longer working and he cannot access his system. Two things about this, first we take on board his problem and help him solve it, not ‘this is down to Apple, not us’ approach and secondly it shows what forced updates can do. I repeat my frequent phrase 'business needs continuity", Apple have never understood this and I’m not sure FileMaker do either at the moment.
We could not provide the level of service our clients expect unless we control every element of it, unless software vendors start to release perfect and backward compatible software. Which is never going to happen.
I think the only strategy that will work is if Claris effectively start to pension off FileMaker Pro so it is not required on each client, have an equivalent developer product and move to a complete web UI with all processing being carried out on the server. Certainly their licensing model would now allow this.
Maybe this is their strategy and they are ahead of all of our current thinking. The danger is that they throw the baby out with the bathwater and allow something new designed ground up to take their place while they are transitioning. When things are changing, then often it is a good time to change yourself.
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our main user base uses filemaker off-line and only syncs to FMS and some RESTapi - and this is why I think FM is amazing - that’s its main benefit for us.
For web stuff and browser centric dev I would never choose FM there are many others already established and even promoted by Claris as it appeared to me: Salesforce it is (!?)
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Sorry, another point I forgot. Just because a particular vendor’s software is used to create your or your client’s solutions, doesn’t necessarily mean that the vendor has the right or the resources to take over responsibility for the running of the (your) system and all of your/your clients’ data.
The latter is a completely different business that takes years to built and a massive infrastructure and support investment.
Building this upon another (monolithic) vendor’s infrastructure adds another layer where there is no direct direct control over and no direct access to their support system.
We do build our servers using an infrastructure supplier, but we know the tech support team personally, can talk by phone to them and, if necessary, can pop down to see them for a meeting. If we have a problem that requires their input, we rarely have to wait for more than 2 minutes for them to contact us 24x7x365.
That is what our customers expect from us.
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This is the not actual issue but Claris thinks it is. The actual issue is people don't want to constantly uninstall/reinstall the same software every year. FM needs to be an install once update forever solution which is in effect what the cloud offers but mostly only in browsers which is their inherent weakness. Claris needs a hybrid approach: the ease of deployment and upgrades the cloud offers with the power performance and stability LAN based solutions (could be remote local) provide.
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Smooth FM updates would be nice. Can I have that under the Christmas tree?
Coincidentally, there will be no more plugins under FMC. Server plugins gone now, client plugins with FMPA dead.
I haven’t seen any paper dealing with that. It’s a no go.
Is that documented anywhere Torsten, or is it due to the lack of documentation that you draw this conclusion?
I guess the future is Claris Connect and APIs? Which begs the question ‘will this alienate their traditional 3rd party vendors?’ in addition to their traditional clients.
I can see the argument once Claris Connect becomes fully functional, but don’t believe it could replace 2EmpowerFM and good luck in replacing MBS.
At the moment I believe we only have marketing level communications, so it would be dangerous to draw too many conclusions I guess?
There is a comparison document FMCAWS vs FMC. It states that FMC does not support plugins.0419_328_FM_CloudAWS_vs_FM_Cloud.pdf (252.5 KB)
A second document comparing FMS vs FMC states the same.
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Plug-ins not supported
vs.
https://www.mbsplugins.de/archive/2019-10-10/FileMaker_Cloud_coming_soon/monkeybreadsoftware_blog_newest
or do I just compare apples to pears?
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It is not so clear in that blog… But will ask Christian next week in Hamburg…
(the blog-comment reads as 'FileMaker Cloud for AWS, what could be a hint to AWS, not FMC)
Or FMC for Azure, or just FMC on their own infrastructure? I feel there’s been a hidden message there since the rebranding.
Wish we could have joined you in Hamburg, I guess you’ll have some new information after that.
Have a good time.
It’s FMC. The underlying infrastructure will be inaccessible and invisible to FMC admins. SAAS.
The paper is fairly clear: no plugin support in FMC.
All interaction with 3rd party sw will forcibly go through the data api.
SaaS may work for the provision of FileMaker Server software and access to it, but they will never make SaaS work as long as their dedicated hosting licensing are enforced.
Imagine Sage or QuickBooks insisting you have your own server and that you manage it, all for a single accounting app license?
This is why we’ll almost certainly abandon our SaaS service for small companies (our most profitable) using FileMaker as we cannot make it work purely for licensing reasons (as posted elsewhere on TFMSoup). Filemaker cloud/hosting is fine for larger companies with deeper pockets, but not for the millions of small businesses with tight cashflow.
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I'm not sure about that part. Server-side, I understand plugins are not supported, but on the desktop client side, I do not see where you draw that conclusion from.
Claris now targets large companies and are not interested in small business anymore Many large companies don't take FileMaker seriously and small companies get (got ?) a lot from FileMaker. They will be left with Access or the equivalent in the free suites 
.
Companies with ghost software could get so much from FileMaker, but that seems to be the end.
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